While there have been no new confirmed cases of patients infected by coronavirus in Genesee County since yesterday, there are now 10 people under mandatory quarantine and "a couple" of them are symptomatic, according to Paul Pettit, director of public health.
Yesterday, Pettit announced Genesee County's first confirmed case. Today he revealed that the person who contracted the disease has some sort of association with the Girl Scouts.
The 10 people now in mandatory quarantine -- up from just two yesterday -- are people who came into contact either directly or one-person removed from the person who contracted COVID-19.
That person is described as at least 65 years old. The person is not hospitalized and is quarantined in isolation at home.
Pettit said Department of Health staff has worked diligently over the past 24 hours to identify the people the infected person came into contact with -- within six feet -- either while symptomatic or 24 hours prior, and he said he's confident most of those people have been identified and contacted and placed into quarantine.
"The Girl Scouts of America are being very cooperative in providing us information to help us in that investigation," Pettit said. "At this point, the relative risk to the general public, again, as we talked about in regards to this case, remains very low through our investigation. We have a very good timeline of where this individual has been and where they've gone. And we have made, again, most of those contacts at the moment and put those folks under quarantine."
There remain seven people in the county under precautionary quarantine.
Pettit reiterated the need for people to practice social distancing -- don't touch, remain six-feet apart -- wash your hands frequently, don't touch your face, stay home if you're sick, isolate yourself as much as possible.
That will help protect you and vulnerable residents from the spread of the disease, but just as important it will help slow the spread of the flu, which can also lead to hospitalization for some people.
"I know it can be painful and it's not what people want to do, but the reality is we need to free up capacity in our health care system," Pettit said. "And that's why the governor is currently looking at alternate sites to provide additional capacity because at the moment, a lot of our beds are still full and we need to make room for folks if they do have a higher level of severity with this illness so that we can handle them. Again, going back to what we keep talking about, flatten the curve, push it out, let's free up some capacity in our health care system so we can respond to those in need."
Pettit said if you have flu-like symptoms, contact your primary health care provider.
"We're going to continue to report out that flu still remains very prevalent in our communities," Pettit said. "So if you are having a respiratory illness, it does not necessarily mean you have COVID-19. You may have the flu or you may have some other respiratory illness, regardless of what it is. We're asking folks to stay home. This is no different than our messaging that we do year-round when you have flu."
Pettit said he's frustrated that there are so few testing kits available and that the county cannot, as of yet, offer widespread testing for COVID-19.
"It's been very challenging," Pettit said. "There's just a shortage. They're just not available, contrary to what we are hearing from the federal government, from the state government, you know, 'folks wanting to get swabbed can get swabbed.' Unfortunately, locally, that's not the case at the moment. And we're working as hard as we can to provide that capacity to our residents."
It was President Donald Trump who said on March 6 that "anybody who wants a test can get a test."
As of March 17, there have been 25,000 tests administered in the United States. Over the same time period, there have been 274,000 tests administered in South Korea. South Korea is reportedly making progress in fighting the spread of the disease.
There are several factors involved in the lack of available tests in the United States.
Asked about the slow response by the federal government, Pettit said, "I can't comment too much on the national level. I mean, that's out of our realm and out of our wheelhouse. Is it anything we can control? I mean, 'would it, could it, should it,' those are all things that we can debate later on. The reality is we need to focus on what's going on on the ground in our community and that's what we're doing here locally with county government and what we're doing in the health department.
"And I can tell you, as I told you yesterday, we are pushing back where we're saying we need these. We're being as aggressive as we can. Any time you have community spread, we need to identify cases. That's how we contain it. That's how we isolate and quarantine folks to try to minimize that continual train of exposure. So all I can tell you is, we are doing our best."
In Italy, where news reports indicated the society and government was slow to respond to the first cases in the country, there were 475 deaths reported today. The most of any country in one day.
Additional reading: The Single Most Important Lesson From the 1918 Influenza (The New York Times Opinion Section)
NOTE: Thank you to Alecia Kaus/Video News Service for sharing a couple of minutes of video from today that I missed because I didn't notice that my camera stopped recording. Regarding our second failed attempt to live stream the press conference, my MacBook wouldn't recognize either mic I tried to use with it, so all I could do was record the press briefing.
